Twit My Face: How Social Networking Sites risks Privacy!

Apr 22, 2010

The other evening my father called me up unexpectedly and asked “How are you?” in a worried accent. Few live bombs were found a couple of days back in the city, but fortunately they were diffused before any upset. My team had lost the semi-final match and was out of the IPL tournament. It had rained heavily in the evening. Apart for all these, individually I was doing perfectly fine. The question “How are you?” completely stumped me. I answered him “I am fine!” but I was bit anxious to know that what made him ask this. Pulling the chain link by link, I realized that I got foot-rest broken near the brakes in my dear Bajaj Avenger and  I updated it to a social-networking-site as my status, which travelled across networks & people and finally reached my parent at home with some added spices.

This incident may seem to be funny story but it has a darker side too. Websites like Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Google Buzz and others have emerged to be seen as an essential part of life for millions of people. They enable users to share their lives with friends around the world, and get in touch with people with similar interests. With 120 million active users on Facebook alone, there is certainly a wide social networking world to discover. But for all those people for whom networking sites are a harmless time-waster, there are, as in all parts of society, some who use it for more malicious purposes.

I’m Active on Facebook! I was Waiting for it… -says Hacker

One of the most potential risk from Social Networking Sites is that it could give hackers a backdoor into corporate IT platforms and databases, putting businesses at risk for malicious cyber attacks as more adults access these sites from computers at work. And not only are the businesses in jeopardy, but many adults are putting themselves at risk for identity theft, too. Just as terroristslook for the most number of victims by accessing aggregation points, malware writers look for that same in, on the Internet. The numbers in the study point to behaviors that easily infect computers.

Our passwords and other secret information are very likely to be based somewhere on our lives. Normally passwords, PINs, security questions are some complex combination of birthdays of spouse/children/sibling/parents/self with some other x-y-z parameters. When you update “Yippie! its my b’day today..” on facebook then you never know somebody least expected is noting down these details of yours and planning to attack you when his notes are completed.

I’m Visiting Hawaii! Thank you for it… -says Burglar

Little while ago, a social experiment, PleaseRobMe, was launched, which displayed the aggregated real-time updates from the users who used the service’s social sharing feature to broadcast their updates publicly on Twitter. The experiment has been called off, but the point they were trying to convey is well conveyed among the users: Sharing your physical location on a public social network is dangerous.

The danger in publicly sharing your physical location is that it leaves everyone known that one place you’re definitely not is your home. So here you are; on one end you leave lights on when you’re going on a holiday, and on the other you’re telling everybody on the Internet you’re not home. It gets even worse if you have ‘friends’ who want to colonize your house.

I’m with friends at Pizza Hut! Return from Sick leave… -says Boss

Oh no! Your Boss just joined Facebook and what’s even worse, he wants to be your friend. More and more people are finding themselves in this situation today and unsure of what to do. Friending

the boss or other work colleagues opens up the details of your private life for the whole world to see – and you might not be entirely comfortable with that.

The problem with all the networking sites zeroes in to your definition of a friend. Ever since this age of networking has kicked up, the common goal, more or less, seems to be having more number of friends. This mindset has flooded over almost all social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Google Buzz, all of which publicly track and expose how many people follow you, an indication of popularity. And who doesn’t want to be popular?

All the friends may not be as trustworthy as your best friends. One should be very particular while accepting the friend requests from the various kinds of people. Its not advisable to befriend with a stranger unless you are very cautious in sharing your life publically.

I’m Smarter than ever! I’m Relaxed now… -says your relaxed Soul

The fears of being socially stalked have been spoken behind the curtains ever since these social networking sites were launched.There are certain ways to maintain some privacy when using services like these. Several social-networking-experts suggests ways to be safe: don’t share your current location, choose your friends wisely, check in after you have left and maintain privacy levels.

The best remedy to these situations, along with being active too, is to know and understand the hazards of Socail Networks which will make you foresee the risks. There is never a need to share private confidential information online.

Use social networks to share and promote ideas, not to share Privacy!

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